I recently received a beautiful delivery from The Bouqs that was just so incredible, I couldn’t resist posting some photos. Heavy on the tropical vibes (my favorite kind of vibes) and complete with the most uniquely fun and fruity elements, I loved every single characteristic of the bouquet. Before I go further, I want to note that this is not a sponsored post, I just truly loved this sweet gift so much and wanted to share a look at this beauty with you. For those of you who aren’t yet familiar with The Bouqs – they are a wonderful company who has taken the online flower delivery game to the next level. Gone are the days of those cheesy, poorly arranged flowers from the small selection of online flower delivery sites you had to choose from in the past. On TheBouqs.com you’ll find a wide array of beautifully arranged, farm fresh flowers. They sent me their “The Flamingo” bouq, as well as some additional goodies, and it was definitely the prettiest delivery I’ve ever come home to. I loved the vibrant, tropical feel of it all so I decided to dissect the elements to get a better look at the beauty, and then I decided to use a few elements of the bouq to decorate a cake, because…well, what else would you expect from me?!  Here’s what the cake looked like once I finished.

Since this turned into a collaboration of sorts, The Bouqs team asked if they could interview me for a Q+A on their blog. I ended up talking about my creative process, inspiration, my love of flowers, and much more. You can read the interview on their blog HERE.

Some of you may be concerned about putting fresh flowers on your cakes, especially flowers that may have potential negative elements. Please believe that I take fresh flower decorating very seriously on my cakes. I have to, because as you have probably noticed over the years, I passionately prefer to use fresh flowers over sugar flowers. Regardless of how talented you are in molding a sugar flower, the beauty of fresh flowers always takes precedent in my opinion. So, when working with flowers that have some potential adverse reactions if eaten, here is my protocol. Please note this is just what I do, and I’m no expert in the toxicity of flowers. For those of you interested, I’d suggest you do your own research as well!

Fresh Flower Decorating Tips:

• If you’re baking the cake for someone, make sure they know that the decor is not edible (an obvious for most, but you never know)
• Look up the flowers you’re using to better assess what precautions should be taken, or if they should be avoided completely
• Source flowers from an organic farm. Many grocery store flowers come from farms that use pesticides.
• When using flowers that aren’t edible, I make sure they never touch the buttercream or cake. Using wax paper can give you a protective (+ translucent!) layer that becomes hidden once flowers or greenery are added atop it. Read below for more on that.
• For flowers that are safe, rinse the flowers if possible, as some farms may use pesticides.
• When positioning fresh flowers into a cake, first position the stem of the flower into a plastic straw (that is cut just longer than your stem), then insert the straw into a cake so that only the plastic straw touches the cake and not the stem or the flower. If you’re using a thick stemmed flower, buy some boba or milkshake straws!
• On that note, for flowers with stems that may have a dew-y runoff, melt the end of the straw to close it and prevent any of the stem’s liquid from getting into the cake.

What you can’t see from the photos of this cake is that there is a wax paper ring sitting atop the buttercream cake. If you plan on covering the entire top of the cake, just cut a circle out of wax paper. Position the wax paper once the buttercream is soft and then allow the cake to sit back in the fridge for 20 minutes to allow the wax paper to properly set on the cake. You can even use a few toothpicks to secure the wax paper in place if you’ll be adding a lot of flowers. To begin decorating, I pipe a small ring of buttercream around the top of my wax paper and add on my first layer of flowers or greenery. For anything with some weight, I add a couple extra dollops of buttercream to the back. Any slightly problematic flowers get added atop the greenery to ensure they don’t touch the cake. It’s much easier to decorate a cake with fresh flowers that aren’t touching the cake than you may think!

The Bouqs works with local farms and solely work with farms that practice sustainable, eco-friendly farming which is very important. And because they work with local farms, they are able to deliver flowers that were cut just a couple days prior, making them last much longer than flowers you’d get at the grocery store or on other sites. You can read more about them and check out all of their beautiful bouqs available for purchase on their website.